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Gert and Uwe Tobias — Gert and Uwe Tobias manage to fuse the monochrome backgrounds of Yves Tanguy’s surrealist landscapes and the macabre faces of traditional apotropaeic amulets with the lightness of cartoons, worn down graffiti and schoolyard murals. There is something flayed about their figures – as if they have been peeled of their individuality, made
Gert and Uwe Tobias

Gert and Uwe Tobias manage to fuse the monochrome backgrounds of Yves Tanguy’s surrealist landscapes and the macabre faces of traditional apotropaeic amulets with the lightness of cartoons, worn down graffiti and schoolyard murals. There is something flayed about their figures – as if they have been peeled of their individuality, made

Gert and Uwe Tobias's coloured woodcut on paper seamlessly merges the dreamlike, monochrome depths of surrealist landscapes with the unsettling grimaces of apotropaic folk imagery. The figures that populate this work appear strangely stripped and exposed, caught between the breezy irreverence of cartoon illustration and the weathered rawness of graffiti scraped from a schoolyard wall. There is a haunting tension in their forms — peeled back, as though drained of personal identity, yet animated by an eerie, ritualistic energy that pulses through every carved line.

Medium
coloured woodcut on paper

🔨 Auction Lot

Contemporary Art Day Sale

June 28, 2013

Estimate: $12,000$18,000

Sold: $22,500

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About this work

Gert and Uwe Tobias, Gert and Uwe Tobias manage to fuse the monochrome backgrounds of Yves Tanguy’s surrealist landscapes and the macabre faces of traditional apotropaeic amulets with the lightness of cartoons, worn down graffiti and schoolyard murals. There is something flayed about their figures – as if they have been peeled of their individuality, made

Gert and Uwe Tobias's coloured woodcut on paper seamlessly merges the dreamlike, monochrome depths of surrealist landscapes with the unsettling grimaces of apotropaic folk imagery. The figures that populate this work appear strangely stripped and exposed, caught between the breezy irreverence of cartoon illustration and the weathered rawness of graffiti scraped from a schoolyard wall. There is a haunting tension in their forms — peeled back, as though drained of personal identity, yet animated by an eerie, ritualistic energy that pulses through every carved line.

Medium
coloured woodcut on paper
Seen at
Phillips, New York, London, Hong Kong

Related themes

Surrealism, Dark, Cartoonish, Decorative, Whimsical, Woodcut, Expressionist, German, Figurative, Contemporary

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